Bali News

Although the recent data mentioned that Japanese tourists come to Bali getting decrease but it cause no negative effect to Gianyar stone frog. It is proved from Gianyar artisans who said that the sculpture export showed significant escalation.

The problem here merely rest upon the basic material for this sculpture that always imported from Yogyakarta, Middle Java. “Thousands of frog sculptures exported to that sakura’s country are on demand of tourists who had visited Bali,” said I Nyoman Pugeg, one of the stone of hardened soil artisan at Jalan Raya Singapadu, Sukawati of Gianyar Regency, on Tuesday (July 6).

Met at his show room, Pugeg mentioned that the frog sculpture of Balinese artisan commonly made in small size, which becomes Japanese tourists’ favorite.

“In one month we could exported thousand sculptures,” he said whilst keep plugging his chisel eye on the stone he imported from “gudeg”.

Pugeg said that a small frog sculpture sold for 20 thousand Rupiah. “A tourist usually ordered 100 to 300 sculptures. Meanwhile, every month at least there are five Japanese tourists come to our ‘show room’ ordered that frog sculpture which they think cute,” said this man who has in sculpting profession since 1972. According to him, the making of that 10-centimeter small sculpture would cost him from two to three hours. “If there are lots of orders then we would give half of it to our colleague,” he said to Antara. Artisans here always help each other. If one achieve quite lots orders then others would help with appropriate price, he said.

Beside frog sculpture, hundreds of other sculptures also sell by Pugeg, starting from sacred to decoration sculptures. Sacred sculptures such as gods and goddess sculpture usually bought by local people. “If it is sacred sculpture, sculpture with one meter height would need two months to finish, it’s totally different compared to frog sculpture that only need hours to finish,” he confessed.

Not merely Pugeg, other artisan named I Made Sudarta also achieve quite high frog sculpture order from Japanese. “Beside frog sculpture, other small decorations sculpture such as small Budha, the same size with the frog sculpture, also become those foreign tourists favorite who visiting Bali,” he added.

News by NusaBali